Lawsuit Investigation: Google, YouTube Video Ad Fraud?
Last Updated on July 11, 2023
Investigation Complete
Attorneys working with ClassAction.org have finished their investigation into this matter.
Check back for any potential updates. The information on this page is for reference only.
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At A Glance
- This Alert Affects:
- Advertisers who paid to run video ads on YouTube and the third-party websites and apps that make up Google’s video partner network.
- What’s Going On?
- Attorneys are investigating whether a class action lawsuit can be filed against Google after new research has suggested that the tech giant may have misrepresented the quality and nature of its video ad placements. A report by Adalytics found that “significant quantities” of video ads were being shown on third-party sites instead of YouTube and were muted, autoplayed, could not be skipped or otherwise failed to meet Google’s own quality standards.
- How Could a Lawsuit Help?
- A class action lawsuit could help advertisers recover money they may have overpaid for ads that were not served as represented by Google. It could also potentially force Google to change how it places ads in the future.
Attorneys working with ClassAction.org are investigating whether a class action lawsuit can be filed against Google on behalf of advertisers who paid to run video campaigns on YouTube and Google’s video partner network.
It’s believed that advertisers may have paid a premium price with the expectation that their video ads would predominantly be featured on YouTube and that ads run on third-party websites and apps would be held to a stringent standard. A new report suggests that this is not the case.
A report released by Adalytics, a company that analyzes online ad placement, revealed that although advertisers pay a premium to display skippable in-stream ads on YouTube, only about half of these ads are actually shown on the platform. What’s more, the other half of the ad placements on third-party apps and websites seem to be in violation of Google’s own policies.
Report: Video Ad Placement Violates Google’s Policies
According to their own documentation (referenced in the scathing Adalytics report), Google represents that its proprietary TrueView ads “give[] advertisers more value because they only have to pay for actual views of their ads, rather than impressions” and that:
- “Video ad placements must be audible by default.
- Scroll-to-play ads are not permitted for TrueView.
- For mid-rolls, the video content’s duration must be at least 10 minutes.”
In other words, Google’s policies state that its proprietary TrueView or in-stream ads—which are displayed before, during or after videos played on the YouTube platform—must be skippable, audible and initiated by a user’s actions. These conditions do not appear to be enforced and, consequently, advertisers may have grossly overpaid for these placements.
This research report finds that for years, significant quantities of TrueView skippable in-stream ads, purchased by many different brands and media agencies, appear to have been served on hundreds of thousands of websites and apps in which the consumer experience did not meet Google’s stated quality standards. For example, many TrueView in-stream ads were served muted and auto-playing as out-stream video or as obscured video players on independent sites. Often, there was little to no organic video media content between ads and the video units simply played ads only. The ads were even sometimes looped.
The report also found that some ads were placed on low-quality or disreputable websites and apps, such as potential piracy sites, websites that appear to spread disinformation and, in some instances, delisted apps developed by software vendors in U.S.-sanctioned countries. According to Adalytics, these findings call into question whether Google properly vets the websites in its network.
Attorneys Begin a Legal Investigation into Google, YouTube
Attorneys are investigating whether a class action lawsuit can be filed against Google in light of this information. They believe (and the report itself claims) that advertisers would not have paid for these placements had they known the extent to which their ads would be shown outside of YouTube and that the quality standards would not be enforced.
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